The American Way of Life

In March 1863, I embarked on the Kentucky,
the steamboat plying between New York and Albany. (1)

At that time of year there was a great deal
of trade between the two cities because of the large quantities of goods
arriving in them from the rest of the world. The New York businessmen remain
constantly in touch with their agents in the most far-flung reaches of the
country, distributing many products from the Old World and exporting
manufactured goods from all over the nation.

My departure gave me a new opportunity to
admire the bustle of New York. (2) Passengers
were flocking in from all directions, some bossily supervising the porters
carrying their innumerable suitcases, others unencumbered, like those
English tourists whose wardrobes fit into bags of negligible size. All were
in a terrible hurry, (3) all trying to
reserve the last seat on board; which, under the pressure of speculation and
in the best American tradition, had become positively elastic.
(4)

Two warning bells had already terrorised the
latecomers. The landing-board was bending under the weight of the final
arrivals, invariably people whose journey cannot be put off without
considerable loss. But this multitude somehow found room in the end. Parcels
and passengers were piled up on board, all fitted neatly into each other.
(5) The fire from the boiler roared in the chimneys, the
Kentucky's deck trembled. The sun, valiantly attempting to cut through
the morning mist, fractionally warmed up the air -- that March air which
makes you turn up your jacket-collar and put your hands in your pockets,
whilst saying: it's going to be fine today.

Since my journey had nothing to do with
business, since my bag easily held both the essentials and the luxuries, and
my mind was not busy planning gambles on the stock-exchange, nor with
keeping an eye on the markets, I was strolling through my thoughts. All the
while, (6) I was leaving to chance, that
constant companion of tourists, the task of finding some subject of
enjoyment or diversion en route -- when I recognised a friend standing right
in front of me, and smiling in the most charming way.

"Good-day, Mrs Melville!"
(7) I cried, with surprise and pleasure. "So you don't mind the
dangers and crowds of a Hudson River steamboat!" (8)

"As you can see, my good sir," she replied,
shaking hands in the English fashion. "In any case, I'm not alone, as my
good old Arsinoah is with me."

She indicated her faithful black, sitting on
a wool-bale and looking at her devotedly. The word devotedly should
be stressed, for only black servants are able to gaze in this particular
way.

"However great the help and support given by
Arsinoah," I said, "I consider myself fortunate to have the right to ensure
your protection during this voyage."

"If it's a right," she replied with a laugh,
"then there's no obligation. But why are you here? From what you said, you
were only going to travel in a few days' time. Why didn't you say yesterday
that you were leaving?"

"Because I didn't know then. I only decided
to leave because the bell on the steamer woke me up at six. It might easily
have been very different. If I had woken up at seven, I might have set off
for Philadelphia! But what about you, Madam? Yesterday you too seemed the
most settled woman in the world."

"Perhaps I am! But the Mrs Melville
(9) you see here is really Sales Director for Henry Melville,
Shipping Merchant of New York; and she is going to Albany
(10) to oversee the arrival of some goods.
(11) You wouldn't understand that, being a citizen of the
over-civilised countries of the Old World! (12)
Since my husband couldn't leave New York this morning, I'm going in his
place. You can be sure that the books won't be any the worse kept, nor the
bottom line any less accurate. (13)

"I've decided to be astonished by nothing any
more. But if such a thing happened in France, if the women did their
husbands' work, the husbands would soon be doing their wives': playing the
piano, cutting flowers, embroidering pairs of braces. . . ."
(14)

"You are not very kind to your compatriots."

"On the contrary, since I'm assuming that
their wives do embroider their braces for them!"

At that moment the third bell was heard. The
last travellers rushed on to deck while the deckhands shouted and picked up
long poles to push off with.

I offered my arm to Mrs Melville and
conducted her a little towards the stern, where it was slightly less
crowded.

"I gave you letters of introduction for
Albany. . . ." she began.

"You did. Should I thank you for the
umpteenth time?"

"Certainly not, since they're now completely
useless. As I'm on my way to see my father, who they're addressed to, may I
offer hospitality on his behalf and introduce you to him?"

" (15)I was
right to count on chance for a pleasant journey. And yet we almost didn't
leave."

"What do you mean?"

"A certain traveller, aficionado of the
eccentricities which the English monopolised before America was discovered,
wished to reserve the whole of the Kentucky for himself."

"He was obviously from the East Indies,
travelling with a troop of elephants and a whole band of lovely Indian
dancers?"

"Not at all. I was present during his
discussion with the Captain, who refused his request; and no elephant
featured in the conversation as far as I could see. This character was a
stout and cheerful man who just wished to have some elbow-room. But . . .
but that's him, Madam! I remember his face. Can you see that fellow on the
quay running towards us waving his arms and shouting? He's going to hold us
up further, for the steamboat is already leaving."

A man of average height but with an enormous
head, decorated with two burning bushes in the place of red sideburns, and
wearing a long double-collared frock-coat and a broad-beamed gaucho stetson,
had just arrived near the landing-board, which had been taken up a few
seconds before. Completely out of breath, he waved his arms, he jumped up
and down, he shouted, ignoring the laughter of the crowd gathering around
him.

"Hey! Kentucky! For Christ's sake!
I've reserved a place, booked it, paid for it, and now I'm left behind on
dry land! For Christ's sake, Captain, I'll hold you responsible before the
judge and his assessors."

"You're too late!" shouted the Captain from
one of the capstans on deck. "We have a timetable to keep, and the tide is
turning."

"For Christ's sake! I'll sue you for at least
a hundred thousand dollars! Bobby!" he shouted, turning to one of the two
blacks with him. "Sort out the luggage and run to the hotel, while Dacopa
finds a rowboat to get us to this damned Kentucky."

"No use," shouted the Captain, ordering the
last mooring to be cast off.

"Move, Dacopa!"

The said black seized the cable just before
the steamboat could drag it away, and rapidly turned the end round one of
the capstans. (16) Before the crowd's
applause had died down, the obstinate traveller jumped into a small boat and
by means of a few oar-strokes reached the Kentucky. He rushed up
the steps, on to the deck, along to the Captain, and laid vigorously into
him, making as much noise as ten men and more outpouring than twenty nagging
women. The Captain, unable to place the fraction of an argument, and seeing
that the traveller had in any case taken full possession, decided to give
in. Seizing his loudhailer, he headed for the boiler-room. But just as he
was about to give the signal for departure, the big man came up to him,
shouting: "What about my parcels, for God's sake?"

"Who are you picking on?" howled the intrepid
traveller. "Am I not a free citizen of the United States of America? My name
is Mr Augustus Hopkins, (17) and if that
means nothing to you. . . ."

I was not certain whether this name enjoyed
any influence on the great majority of the spectators. But in any case, the
Captain of the Kentucky was forced to heave to again so as to
embark the luggage of one (18) Augustus
Hopkins, a free citizen of the United States of America.

"It must be admitted", I opined to Mrs
Melville, "that this is a remarkable man."

"Less remarkable than his parcels," she
replied pointing to two trailers approaching the landing-board, each laden
with an enormous container, twenty feet high, covered with waxed tarpaulins,
and tied up with an inextricable network of ropes and knots. "Top"
and "Bottom" were marked in red letters; and the word "FRAGILE",
marked in letters a foot high, (19) was
giving heart-attacks to every bureaucrat within visual range.

In spite of the protests at these monstrous
parcels, Mr Hopkins used his feet, hands, head, and lungs to such effect
that, despite considerable difficulties and delays, both were finally placed
on deck. The Kentucky was at last able to leave the quay and sail
up the Hudson, joining the ships of all sorts ploughing up and down it.

Augustus Hopkins's two blacks were put on
sentry duty beside their master's containers -- containers which attracted a
great deal of curiosity. Most of the passengers crowded round, giving full
rein to the eccentric ideas of a transatlantic imagination. Mrs Melville
herself seemed to be highly interested, while I, as a Frenchman, feigned a
total indifference.

"What a strange person you are!" said Mrs
Melville. "You don't seem to care what's in these two monuments. I'm
devoured by curiosity." (20)

"I must confess that all this hardly
interests me. When I saw these two monstrosities arrive, the wildest ideas
came into my head. I said to myself: they either contain a five-storey house
together with its occupants, or else nothing at all. But even if these are
the most bizarre ideas I can imagine, neither of them would especially
surprise me. However, Madam, if you wish, I will go and find out some
information for you."

"Thanks. While you're away, I'll check my
accounts."

I left my remarkable companion to perform her
calculations with the speed of the cashiers at the Bank of New York, who
apparently need only to glance at a column of figures to know its total
immediately.

Still thinking about the strange object and
the two opposing modes of behaviour of these charming American women, I made
my way towards the man who was the centre of all attention, the subject of
all conversation.

Although the two containers totally hid the
steamboat and the course of the Hudson, the helmsman steered with absolute
confidence. Yet there must have been a great number of obstacles in his way,
for never were rivers, not even the Thames, more covered with vessels than
those of the United States. At a period when French Customs listed a mere
twelve or thirteen thousand ships, and Great Britain forty thousand, the
United States already had sixty thousand, including two thousand steamships
battling against the waves of the Seven Seas. From these numbers one can
imagine the amount of trade involved; and also understand why the rivers of
America are the scene of so many accidents.

It is true that these incidents, these
encounters, these shipwrecks do not seem very important to the toughminded
businessmen. They even provide new business for the insurance companies, who
charge exorbitant premiums and would be in serious difficulties if they had
to reduce them. In America, a man has less value and importance than a sack
of coal or a bale of coffee. (21)

If the Americans are perhaps right, I
personally would have exchanged the coalmines and coffee-plantations of the
whole world for my own French body! And I was more than a little worried
about the outcome of our headstrong progress through a multitude of dangers.

Augustus Hopkins did not seem to share my
fears. It was clear that he was one of those people who prefer to jump,
derail, or sink rather than miss a single opportunity. But in any case, he
paid no attention to the beauties of the Hudson. (22)
From the departure at New York to the arrival at Albany, he was merely
killing eighteen hours. The delightful resorts on the banks, the villages
clustering picturesquely around, the woods carelessly strewn here and there
like bouquets at a prima donna's feet, the varied course of a magnificent
river -- nothing could take this man's mind off his stock-market concerns.
He kept pacing from stern to bow, muttering unfinished sentences or suddenly
sitting down on piles of goods and drawing from his many pockets a broad
thick wallet stuffed with papers of all sorts. I even thought he was
deliberately showing off this collection from the bureaucracy of his
profession. He burrowed keenly through a pile of correspondence and spread
out letters from every country, with coloured stamps from all the post
offices in the world, whose closely-written lines he perused with a
perseverance that was very noticeable and, I believe, very much noticed.

It did not seem possible to find anything out
from him. In vain had several spectators tried to engage in conversation
with the two blacks guarding the mysterious containers: these two children
of Africa had maintained a total silence, (23)
in marked contrast with their usual behaviour. (24)

I was therefore about to go and report back
to Mrs Melville, when I happened to find myself in a group around the
Captain. He was talking about Hopkins.

"I'm telling you, this eccentric never does
anything else. He's already sailed up the Hudson from New York to Albany ten
times, he's managed to be late ten times, and ten times he's travelled with
the same sort of package. Where's it all going to end? God knows. There's a
rumour going round that Mr Hopkins is setting up a big company several miles
out of Albany and is being sent strange goods from every part of the globe."

"He must be one of the directors of the East
India Company, come to set up a trading-post in America."

The demands and counter-demands flew back and
forth, resulting in considerable chaos. Although personally far from
interested in speculation, I followed the band of would-be investors towards
the hero of the Kentucky. Hopkins was soon surrounded by a dense
crowd that he did not even bother to look at. Long rows of figures, numbers
with impressive retenues of zeroes were being lined up on his huge wallet.
The four arithmetical operations flowed from his pencil, and the millions
raced from his lips like a mountain stream, in a clear case of calculation
fever. A silence fell around him in spite of the storms raging in all those
American heads with their passion for deals.

Finally, at the end of a gigantic
calculation, in which the Honourable Augustus Hopkins broke his pencil-point
three times on a majestic 1 commanding an army of eight superb
zeroes, (27) he produced the sacred words:
"One hundred million."

Then he quickly folded his papers, put them
back in his amazing wallet, and drew from his pocket a watch decorated with
two fine rows of pearls.

"If you hadn't been so stubborn and tried to
leave me behind," retorted Hopkins, his voice rising an octave, "you
wouldn't have wasted so much time, time that is so precious at this period!"

"And if you and your containers had had the
foresight to arrive in time, we could have used the rising tide and been a
good three miles further on!"

"I don't want to discuss all that. I must be
at the Washington Hotel in Albany by midnight, and, if I am not, there is no
point in me having left New York. I warn you that in such a case I will sue
you and your company for damages."

"You'll mind your own business!" shouted the
Captain, beginning to get annoyed.

"Certainly not, while your lily-liveredness
and fuel economies are putting me in danger of losing half-a-dozen fortunes!
Come on, fireman, four or five good shovels of coal into the boilers. You,
engineer, put your foot on the safety-valve, so we can make up for lost
time!"

Hopkins threw a purse into the boiler-room
with several dollars gleaming.

The Captain, for his part, threw a fit, but
our enraged traveller somehow found a way to shout louder and longer than
him. As for myself, I quickly left the scene of conflict, knowing that this
recommendation to the engineer to weigh down the valve, thus increasing the
steam-pressure and making the vessel go faster, could easily result in the
whole boiler blowing up.

It goes without saying that our travelling
companions found the idea quite normal. I consequently did not mention it to
Mrs Melville, who would have laughed out loud at my unjustified fears.

When I got back, she had finished her long
calculations, and commercial worries were no longer wrinkling her charming
brow.

"The merchant you spoke to", she said, "has
now become a woman of the world. So you can (28)
talk about anything you wish -- art, feelings, poetry. . . ."

"Talk about art", I protested, "or dreams or
poetry, after what I've seen and heard! (29)
No, no, no! I'm full of commercial ideas, I can only hear the clinking of
dollars, I'm dazzled by the reflection of coins. This fine river is now
nothing but a convenient shipping-lane, these charming banks a towpath,
these pretty villages a line of warehouses for cotton and sugar. I am
seriously thinking of damming the Hudson and using its water to drive a
coffee-mill!" (30)

"Apart from the coffee-mill, that all sounds
like a jolly good idea!"

"Why, if you please, should I not have ideas
like anyone else?"

"So you've been bitten by the industrial
bug?"

"Judge for yourself."

I recounted the successive scenes I had
witnessed. She listened seriously to my account, as is normal in America,
and began to think about it. A Parisienne would not have let me get
halfway.

"Well, Madam, what do you think of this
Hopkins?"

"This man might possibly be an investment
genius setting up a monstrous enterprise, or else simply a bear-showman from
the last Baltimore Fair."

I laughed and we changed the subject.

1.
A footnote attached to the title of the French edition of the short story
reads: "This previously unpublished jest was written in about 1863. M.J.V."

"M.J.V." means Michel
Jules-Verne. There was no footnote in the original manuscript. What is more,
the explanatory footnote to "The Eternal Adam" (1910) reads "1. This short
story, written by Jules Verne in the last years of his life and published
here for the first time, has the peculiarity of leading to rather
pessimistic conclusions, in contrast with the proud optimism which infuses
the rest of the Extraordinary Journeys. M.J.V.". Given that this
latter footnote seems to take a perverse pleasure in telling as many fibs as
it can, it throws considerable doubt on both the claimed date and the idea
of a "jest" in the present case.

2.
JV: Old World; the merchant shipping of every form and tonnage, the clippers
whose amazing speed meant that the United States were only ten days away
from Britain, the galiots from Holland, the three-masters from the
Mediterranean swallowing into their vast holds the produce from the old
continent; then, despite the storms of the Gulf of Gascony, the currents of
Gibraltar, the squalls of the Channel and the shoals of the North Sea, they
arrived to deposit their goods safely on the docksides, exchanging them for
varieties of precious wood, coffee, rice, sugar, gold powder and dollars
from this marvellous country of America.

Accordingly, without being
surprised at the activity of its businessmen, it was not possible for me to
get tired of admiring the bustle of the early-morning city. Passengers were

MV: Old World and exporting
manufactured goods from all over the nation. My departure gave me a new
opportunity to admire the bustle of New York. Passengers were

Much of Jules Verne's
description is "recycled" from the virtuoso one of Liverpool in Backwards to Britain:
appropriately enough, since Liverpool was the port for America.

3.
JV: terrible hurry, umbrellas in hands and bowler hats on heads, all trying
to

MV: terrible hurry, all trying
to

4.
Flaubert provides a description of a steamboat departure at the beginning of
L'Education Sentimentale (1869), which it would be interesting to
compare with Verne's.

5.
JV: found room. The parcels piled up on each other; and the passengers all
fitted neatly into each other. The fire

MV: found room. Parcels and
passengers were piled up on board, all fitted neatly into each other. The
fire

Michel, in other words, is
more elegant, but JV much ruder.

6.
JV: I was strolling through my thoughts. All the while, I was regretting
only one thing, a travelling companion; my old friend Édouard Vaillant, who
until then had accompanied me in my American travels, had been obliged to
spend a few more days in New York. A family obligation, he had ventured to
tell me, forced him to part company for a while, but he would soon rejoin me
at Francis Wilson's house, one of the richest businessmen in Albany and the
French Consul, and for whom we had the warmest letters of recommendation. In
order not to upset the excellent Édouard, I had pretended to believe in this
obligation and family with a good humour that must have given him a curious
idea of my intelligence. As far as duties were concerned, he fulfilled them
very little in his quality as an artist, and, as for his family, they had
been living in France for some twenty years, without leaving him the
slightest sign of a relative in the land of his forefathers.

I had therefore left on my
own, leaving to chance, that intimate friend of travellers, the task of
finding en route some subject of enjoyment or diversion. I was strolling
through my thoughts; I was trying to think which blond locks or blue eyes
might be keeping Édouard in New York, when I recognised

MV: I was strolling through my
thoughts. All the while, I was leaving to chance, that constant companion of
tourists, the task of finding some subject of enjoyment or diversion en
route -- when I recognised

The name "Édouard Vaillant"
(lit.: "valiant", presumably because of his female conquests) was changed by
Jules Verne from "Édouard Garnier", the name of one of his real-life
friends.

"Me?" I replied, believing it
my duty to defend my country. "However, France's trade can be discussed with
pride: the Marseilles businessmen, and those of . . ."

"But," continued Mrs Melville
with vigour, "the Americans are even more Marseillais than your
compatriots."

"However," I began . . . but
then stopped; I had reached the point of beginning all my sentences with the
word `however', and was heading for a ridiculous discussion; so I changed
the subject, for I had sworn never to defend my country, commercially
speaking.

"Be that as it may," continued
Mrs Melville, "since Henri couldn't leave

MV: Old World! Since my
husband couldn't leave

13.
JV: accurate for all that, for I know how to draw up a charter party and how
to arrange an insurance policy."

19.
The interest in typographical detail within the story -- on the packages and
posters -- is a sign of a self-referring text, in the best modern tradition
(and is also another link with Journey to the Centre
of the Earth, which is generated by text-within-the-text).

20.
JV: I'm devoured by curiosity, all the more so because their owner is hardly
travelling in a natural way."

"I must confess that

MV: I'm devoured by
curiosity."

"I must confess that

21.
JV: of coffee. That may be true, morally speaking; but, speaking as the
egoist that I am, I personally would have

MV: of coffee.

If the Americans are perhaps
right, I personally would have

22.
Phileas Fogg will show a similar blindness to the beauties of nature, while
rushing single-mindedly to his destination.

24.
JV: with their usual behaviour. What is more, the blacks, according to their
own principles, must really curse the first of their number who was foolish
enough to produce a sound; for it was from that day, so they maintain, that
they became slaves, and were forced to work. According to them, monkeys are
blacks who are wise enough to keep silent, and thus avoid the heavy
exertions of slavery.

I was therefore about

MV: with their usual
behaviour.

I was therefore about

As usual with Verne's irony,
his remarks are, at least in modern eyes, both racist and anti-racist, pro
and anti-slavery, evolutionary and anti-evolutionary.

25.
The New York Herald is central in Michel Verne's "In the Year 2889"
(1889).

26.
JV: a thousand dollars extra! In three months they'll have doubled!"

The demands and
counter-demands

MV: a thousand dollars extra!"

The demands and
counter-demands

27.
Verne again displays a modern awareness of the characters making up his own
text. But in addition, the proud 1 and its retinue of obedient
0's has a clear sexual implication.

28.
JV: world. So you can talk without fear, tell her your moral and physical
observations about anything you

MV: world. So you can talk
about anything you

29.
JV: after what I've seen and heard! I confess that I would not be capable of
that; one would have to have my friend Vaillant's exuberant and changeable
soul to be able to do that; I myself am full of commercial ideas

MV: after what I've seen and
heard! No, no, no! I'm full of commercial ideas

30.
This remark anticipates the scathing commentary of L'Invasion de la mer:
"Decidedly (. . .) modern engineers don't respect anything! If they were
allowed, they would fill up the seas with mountains, and our globe would be
nothing but a smooth globe, as polished as an ostrich's egg, conveniently
disposed for laying out railway lines".

31.
JV: to wish. Which brought me back to my ideas on Indian servants: after one
has

MV: to wish. As a bonus, the
service was carried out by blacks. After one has

For Verne, Indians, service
and sex are intimately -- but secretly -- connected.

33.
Lola Montez, stage name of Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert (later
Countess Lansfeld) (1818-61), Irish dancer and adventuress, danced in Paris
in August 1856, then sailed directly for America. lectured in New York, and
then devoted herself to "fallen women". Her lectures were published in New
York in 1858, then in Paris in 1862 ("L'Art de la beauté ou secrets de la
toilette des Dames").

34.
JV: a distraction, nothing else, which will one day give them cause for
happy remembrance; in any case, this famous woman had expressed the wish to
do so, and it is not our custom or habit to oppose whims that harm nobody."

"Our discussions start", my
dear Monsieur Wilson, "from points of view too different for us ever to be
able to agree; we are like two lawyers, one discussing in New Orleans, the
other in Philadelphia: it is quite clear that they will never agree."

"That's true," replied
Mistress Melvil, "but all three of us were happy in Philadelphia, so why did
you leave for New Orleans?"

"I would be wrong, Mistress
Melvil, merely to express an opinion disagreeing with yours; I will
therefore grant whatever pleases you, all the more so because the
eccentricities of Lola Montès were the result simply of your infatuation and
not of speculation. What harm can there

Verne had caught a glimpse of the Crystal Palace during his visit to Britain
in 1859 (and refers to it, although not by name, in Backwards to Britain).
The Universal Exposition was held in Paris in 1889, and this phrase
therefore constitutes an anachronism introduced by Michel.

41.
Fort William was near modern Thunder Bay, Ontario. Based on a fur-trapping
fort, it developed in the 1850s as a silver-mining settlement.

42.
Branches of the Rothschild family lived in Germany, Britain and France.
Verne is probably referring to James Rothschild (1792-1868).

43.
JV: aims produced considerable interest, a Palace of Industry open to the
whole world! Ideas came from everywhere,

MV: aims produced considerable interest. Ideas came from everywhere,

44.
Daguerreotypes were one of the earliest photographic processes, first
described by Daguerre of Paris in 1839.

45.
All these groups of words are in English in the original text (with however
"squave" for "square").

This is clearly a sarcastic comment on Hopkins's paranoiac delusions, but
are the colonies referred to Louisiana (capital, New Orleans), which
included Albany and Fort William (and which had been sold to the United
States in 1815), Canada (French until 1763) or the French West Indies?

47.
JV: of the workers uncovered the remains of a vast underground cave whose
existence could not have been suspected; in it were found the remains of an
enormous skeleton

55.
This whole paragraph, although this is perhaps not obvious on first reading,
is in the free indirect style, that is it is a summary of the Herald
article (and not therefore necessarily believed by the character, let alone
the narrator). This use of the present tense for free indirect style
(especially for facts which are no longer considered to be true) is an
unusual feature in French prose.

56.
JV: The existence of titanic races before our own could no longer be denied:
this discovery proved the truth of the passage in the Bible that indicates
Og, the King of Bashan, as the leader of the giants -- a much disputed
passage as it happens. One can see how many debatable elements the New
York Herald article contained in embryonic form

MV: The existence of a titanic
race before our own could no longer be denied

This is a highly revealing
passage for understanding Jules Verne's religious views, which have never
been totally elucidated; although one can say that here he displays very
considerable scepticism.

Og: Amorite king of Bashan (Deut 31:4; Josh 2:10, 13:12; 1 Kings 4:19). A
man of gigantic stature, as was apparently common amongst the Canaanite
tribes.

57.
JV: question of such importance, which crossed over the Isthmus of Panama
and spread quickly through all the regions of the West Indies. Finally, a
scientific conference,

MV: question of such importance. Finally, a scientific conference,

58.
JV: that these tendencies undermining the Old World totally enchanted me

MV: that these daydreams totally enchanted me

59.
This sentence reveals a remarkable similarity to the climax of Journey to the Centre of the Earth, where a
primitive human creature tends a herd of Mastodonts. The second part of the
sentence constitutes one of the most direct attacks on evolutionary theories
to be found in the Extraordinary Journeys.

61.
A "puff" is an auctioneering term meaning "to increase the price (of a lot)
artificially by having an accomplice make false bids".

62.
JV: transparencies projected all the particularities of that wonderful
Mastodont.

But Hopkins was not

MV: transparencies projected
its silhouette.

But Hopkins was not

63.
A characeristic of Verne's style is the list. Here the effect of listing
many different scientists is not only for Verne to give a surface
respectability to his tale, but, more fundamentally, to subtly undermine
their views, for, if they had all agreed, it would surely have been
sufficient to list just one of them. Verne's science is here decades, if not
centuries, out of date:

Stemberg,
or Sternberg?: there seems to be little trace of a scientist with this name.

Brongnart:
misspelling of Brongniart: either the geologist Alexandre (1770-1847) or his
son Adolphe (1801-76), who founded vegetable paleontology.

64.
Lumley, Benjamin (1811-75), Britsh author and manager of the Opera in
London. He found ill-paid and unpaid artists and "made" them. In 1850-1, he
managed the Paris Italian Opera House, his main star being Sontag. In 1856
he returned to London. He later published Reminiscences (1864).

65.
The word "prehistoric" ("préhistorique") is probably an anachronism, due to
Michel (replacing Jules Verne's "antediluvian"), since the first recorded
occurrence of "préhistorique" dates from 1865. In
Journey to the Centre of the Earth, the word "anté-historique" is
used, but only in the section added in the 1867 edition. Even the
concept of prehistory did not generally exist before the 1860s.

66.
JV: in its captivating company. For my part, I would have found it highly
disagreeable to eat from a plate adorned with a skeleton, however
antediluvian it was; it also has to be admitted that, if this mania for
advertising was to become fashionable, one would be exposed to finding at
the bottom of one's plates, or to reading through one's soup, the most
subversive nourishment and the most indigestible advertisements. I have not
mentioned them all here, even omitting some prize ones; but will simply say
that the effect of this

MV: in its captivating
company.

The effect of this

67.
JV: was trying to reach. There was no longer any question of the Palace of
Industry whose hypothetical shares had already been quoted on the Albany
Stock-Exchange, nor of that new town that the United States had taken
anticipated pride in. Nevertheless, by searching for

70.
JV: a number of bones and animal fragments which now consisted only of their
calcium salts, and whose fibrous parts had disappeared long ago. The subject
of

MV: a number of bones.

The subject of

71.
The breaks in the tale reproduce the fractures between Jules and
Michel's contribution (just as, in Journey to the
Centre of the Earth, the irruption of the text added in 1867 is
reflected in the disruption in the terrain). The common aim of the showman
and of the writer is to make the breaks invisible.

72.
Bone-black is the product of carbonisation of bones, used as pigment,
sometimes in the preparation of manuscripts. Verne takes delight in
referring to the materials of his own creation.

73.
Following bloodstains is a topos of the detective story, very much
in its infancy in the nineteenth century.

74.
This confusion between tigers and North American cats prefigures Dick
Sands, the Boy Captain (1878), where the plot is predicated on a
confusion as to which continent the hero is in, producing fauna which
constantly surprise him.

80.
The Siege of Yorktown (1780) was a decisive British defeat in the American
War of Independence.

81.
The term of Siamese twins originated with Chung and Eng (1811-74), who were
born in Siam, and lived as adults in the United States.

82.
This sentence is a pastiche of the Romantic theme that one has arrived too
late in this world, that everything has already been said and done. This
lament as to the impossibility of new discoveries is at the very heart of
the whole series of the Extraordinary Journeys.

83.
This is a slight trap by the narrator: the "terrible news" is ostensibly
that the skeleton has been destroyed, and not that it is a fake.

84. Verne's scepticism is a healthy counter to
the crazy publicity in 1992 about Columbus's "discovery" of America.